


For The Hunger

by sqvalors



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Drunk Sex, First War with Voldemort, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Post-Hogwarts, Sexual Content, poor communication skills, remus has a biting thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:13:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24346303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sqvalors/pseuds/sqvalors
Summary: To refer to the situation as a break-up would be generous - that would mean acknowledging the existence of anything to break up from, which Sirius would argue stubbornly against and Remus wouldn't try to make a case for, despite the hollow yearning in the pit of his stomach.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 42
Kudos: 366
Collections: favorite wolfstar fics!





	For The Hunger

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from the Ocean Vuong poem 'On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous', which you can read [here](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57586/on-earth-were-briefly-gorgeous/).

It’s a funny thing, the realisation that the kick in your gut is both love and despair. For Remus the two have somehow always been connected, wrapped around each other in such a way that he can’t begin to pick them apart. He doesn’t remember when he first felt it. Sometimes it’s one feeling or the other, sometimes it’s both, sometimes he wishes it would kick hard enough for him to finally vomit up the lump in his throat and be done with it. The problem with him, Sirius used to say, was that he thought too hard about everything. Remus would say the problem with Sirius was that he didn’t think at all, which started out as a funny quip and then became a weapon, barbed and well-aimed.

After a blazing row on the cusp of summer in 1979 Sirius had walked out of the flat and Remus didn’t see him for two months. The row had been stupid, splintering out from a disagreement over orders from Dumbledore which sent them to different sides of the country for reasons neither of them could fathom. Sirius had defended it, spinning something about protecting the group from potential threats, and Remus had taken it personally and accused him of thinking him untrustworthy; when Sirius hadn’t denied it, waiting too long in the space left, Remus had shut himself in the bathroom until he heard the front door slam.

He spent the first month ignoring messages from the Order and covering extra night shifts at the hotel to make up the rent, even though in the end Sirius’ half somehow still arrived on time. By the second month Remus had resigned himself to the fact that Sirius was dead or shacked up with someone else or at the very least spending his time badmouthing him to their friends, and he’d resolved to deal with that by getting very drunk and playing Sirius’ favourite records while a stranger fucked him senseless on their couch. It hadn’t helped, not really, but when Sirius had eventually come home in late July – unannounced, unexplained, bringing takeaway home as some sort of half-arsed apology – Remus had found him listening to the same Stones album and felt a pang of satisfaction and that almost counted.

To refer to the situation as a break-up would be generous - that would mean acknowledging the existence of anything to break up from, which Sirius would argue stubbornly against and Remus wouldn't try to make a case for, despite the hollow yearning in the pit of his stomach he'd felt whenever Sirius brought someone home and kept everyone within a five mile radius awake. It wasn't even that they hadn't slept together, which would probably have made things easier all considered; they'd hooked up sporadically in the years since school finished, blaming it in turn on too many near death experiences or on ease of circumstance or on anything other than the fact that Remus was sickeningly taken with him and Sirius knew it and had always known it. He hasn’t asked Sirius if it feels like anything to him, because he thinks everything feels like something to Sirius, amplified to a level beyond Remus’ comprehension. After Sirius’ vanishing act that arrangement had ended acrimoniously and Remus had spent a month listening to him listening to shitty records through the wall, which was only marginally better than eavesdropping on the sex. Eventually he’d decided he’d rather splinch himself six ways to Sunday than spend another night in the flat and started looking for rooms.

-

Things hit a snag after James’ stag do the following spring, in the middle of a particularly brittle February. To have a wedding at all felt off kilter, but James was stubbornly set on it and though he’d said the baby had nothing to do with it there seemed a sense of panic to things, like they were balancing on a knife edge. Back before Christmas when James broke the news Sirius had said that they’d all been sceptical when Alice and Frank got hitched and that this was hardly different, a decision spurred by fear and uncertainty and something they’d both regret in ten years if they even survived that long, and James hadn’t spoken to him for a month. It was the longest they’d ever gone without talking. It had meant Sirius had been forced to get over himself and talk to Remus like a normal person again, though it felt somewhat sour given the circumstances. Remus had almost been glad in a fucked up way when the Prewetts got themselves killed and forced everyone together for the funeral, even if the frosty silence was only broken by a bottle of whiskey and pack of Marlboros that James and Sirius left the service early to get through. By the time the conversation about a stag do came around Sirius seemed to throw himself into it wholeheartedly, charmed antler headbands and all, as a way to ignore the pressing fear that things were rapidly hurtling towards worse.

They haven’t been out together for months, probably. Sirius had suggested a larger party but hadn’t really wanted to plan it, and Remus knows he would’ve been insufferable if he’d had to share James with anyone other than him and Peter; Lily had pointed out it was hardly the time to be having conspicuous gatherings and that if she was going to be left raising a child alone she’d like to blame it on something more dramatic than James getting cursed to death in a shitty bar. When James had said that all he wanted was a few pints and a night out with just the four of them Remus thinks they all breathed a sigh of relief.

By the time they hit the second bar at around 1am, a wizarding place in Camden, Remus already feels like his brain is bouncing haphazardly off the walls of his skull. The music is a hectic mess he doesn’t recognise but it seems to jolt James back to life as he beelines for the bar, and Peter looks at both Remus and Sirius imploringly. It’s usually Sirius’ job to keep James in check, seeing as they’re more or less the same height and Sirius has such a way of talking him out of any trouble he gets himself into at bars Remus has often wondered if he’s been quietly obliviating people on the sly.

“This one’s on you, Pete,” Sirius says, crowding right against his ear to be heard. Remus stares at the shadowed line of his jaw overenunciating, his broad hand holding Peter’s head still. “I’m heading out for a smoke.”

“Bollocks, you got through two on the way here.” Peter says, scowling. It was never an argument he was going to win and Remus suspects he knew it going in.

“Moony wants one of his horrible menthols and I said I’d guard his honour.” Sirius shrugs dramatically, hand over his heart despite the lie. “You know he’d give away a cig to anyone who asked.”

When Peter looks at him, half for confirmation and half in resignation, Remus pulls a face that he hopes comes across as vaguely sympathetic. Peter wouldn’t be able to hear him if he tried to speak and he doesn’t think he has the energy to verbalise something over the music anyway, and it seems to be enough because Peter shakes his head and disappears into the crowd.

“Reckon they’ll be okay?” Remus asks, when he’s jostled close enough to Sirius to be heard.

“Course.” Sirius grabs him by the wrist and winds them both out towards the smoking area, a glorified back step littered with ash and forgotten cups. They haven’t been alone together voluntarily for weeks. When the cold air hits him Remus shuts his eyes against it and lets himself sway a little, skin prickling. It’s started to rain.

Sirius has already jammed a cigarette between his teeth, lighting it wordlessly with magic, when Remus opens his eyes again. He leans back against the wall and tries not to look like he’s staring at Sirius’ hands.

“God the music in there’s shite. Want a drag?” Sirius says. He’s offering over the cigarette before Remus says anything either way, and he considers it before shaking his head. Sirius shrugs in a _suit yourself_ sort of way and then holds it in his mouth while he drags his hair out of his eyes, tying it messily out of the way. He glances across at Remus once and then stares anywhere else. “Do you think they’re doing it for the right reasons?”

“What?”

“The wedding.”

Remus frowns a little, busying himself with finding his packet of menthols – mostly because he doesn’t want to talk about it tonight, while his brain feels moments away from liquifying, but also in part because he doesn’t want to crack his carefully constructed façade of optimism around James. “Too late either way, isn’t it really.”

“Fucking terrible time for a wedding.”

“Marlene said it was perfect timing,” Remus says. “Though she could’ve been taking the piss. Hard to tell.”

“They’re only doing it because she’s pregnant.”

“Little old fashioned don’t you think.”

“Have you met James?” Sirius says, and Remus shrugs. He’s about to light up the muggle way, his lighter already in his hand, but then Sirius is leaning in without a word and cupping one hand against the wind. He touches a single blue flame to the end of Remus’ cigarette, frowning a little as he tries to keep it steady. Remus can smell his aftershave beneath the sweat and smoke, something with cedarwood. When he steps back Remus almost goes to pull him back in.

“He does love her, though. And I don’t think she’d be marrying him if she didn’t want to, baby or not.”

Sirius doesn’t say anything to that, and Remus is glad of it, considering he’s finding it increasingly difficult to speak to Sirius right now without fixating on his mouth. It’d be almost comical, discussing the merits of marrying for love when Remus feels like he’s one vodka coke away from a sloppy proclamation of his own; part of him had hoped that Sirius’ ulterior motive for getting them separated from the others was a clandestine snog in the toilets rather than whatever this was. It had been a stupid, small hope, held tight in his fist. It’s always felt a little like that, though Remus doesn’t like to think about it much. If he asked Sirius to kiss him he probably would but that’s hardly the point, and given everything it just makes him feel worse. He’s lived so long with the hum of Sirius in his blood he sometimes wants to reach inside himself and drag it out, the feeling rooted so deep in his chest it feels like a separate organ. Hold it in his hands and try to work out what’s so fucking special about it.

“I hope James has got shots.”

“He’s going to be a nightmare in the morning,” Remus says. “Good luck.”

“I’ll get drunk enough that you have to take him back to yours so I don’t lose one of his arms on the trip home,” Sirius says, “Reckon the best man should get as shitfaced as the groom, personally.”

“Absolutely not.”

“You’d have to play nursemaid to both of us, endless offers of sick bowls and pain killers etcetera. Tragic.” Sirius says it offhand, but he’s staring at Remus with a look that almost challenges him to do something, the last of his cigarette burning amber between his knuckles. “It’d be like sixth year Christmas all over again.”

“You never did get those boots out of the lake,” Remus says. He doesn’t know what to do with Sirius’ gaze so he looks away, suddenly interested in the discarded cups at his feet. “We should head back in soon.”

Sirius makes some sort of affirmative noise. Out of the corner of his eye Remus sees him glance sidelong in his direction and wonders why it feels like a vice is closing around his ribs.

-

At quarter past three in the morning they deposit James on Sirius’ sofa, after a muffled hallway argument about whether he’s likely to vomit on the upholstery. It’s a new flat, smaller but cleaner than the one they had shared; Remus hasn’t asked why he moved and Sirius hasn’t volunteered it, which seems to be the way most of their conversations go these days. While he’s kneeling to tug in a half-arsed way at James’ laces Sirius lolls his head up at Remus and says, “I suppose this means you’re bunking with me then.”

“I do have a flat to go home to,” Remus says. “Actually.” He’s perched precariously on the arm of the sofa by James’ head with his eyes closed, vaguely concerned that if he opens them the world will end. He’s not even sure if Sirius is really offering or if it’s just something to say out of politeness, the sort of socially mandated invite you have to extend to your best friend slash not-ex-boyfriend slash semi-regular-fuck, which really would be the sort of pureblood etiquette shit Remus has come to expect of Sirius by now.

“Very grandiose term for a bedsit, that.”

“Fuck off.”

“I’m sure Mrs. Whatsername will be worried about you being out late,” Sirius says, and Remus doesn’t have to look at him to know he’s rolling his eyes. “James mate, I’m going to get you some fucking slip-on shoes if you keep ending up paralytic. These fucking boots.”

James mumbles something that neither of them really hears but sounds foul, and then Remus stands, bracing himself on the back of the sofa, and gingerly makes his way over to the kitchen sink. He lets the tap run for a moment and then grabs the nearest mug from the draining board. 

“Do you want any water,” he says, in the general direction of the living room. In the half-light he can see Sirius in profile, still down on his haunches, looking at James with a sort of reverence Remus feels guilty for witnessing. A flare of something writhes in his gut, and then the water overflows onto his hand and he turns back to the sink. By the time he sets the mug on the counter and wipes his hand half-heartedly on his jeans, Sirius is standing inches away, breathing vodka into his ear.

“You smell like a spillage tray,” Remus mumbles. He closes his eyes and decides that makes the expanding space in his head feel infinitely worse.

“Charming.” Sirius props his hip against the counter. “Gave up on the boots. Put the kettle on will you.”

“Put it on yourself.” Remus wraps both hands firmly around his water mug, takes a barely perceptible step back. Sirius sighs dramatically and reaches across him to flick the switch. At some point since getting home he’s shrugged out of his jacket, T-shirt sweat-damp in a way that Remus doesn’t want to notice. He focuses on the heaviness in his head and the low whistle of the kettle and the way Sirius is right there, at his fingertips for a fleeting second, and then gone again.

“Quite the attitude on you considering you’re a houseguest.” Sirius stifles a yawn and glances across at James – snoring, one leg hanging off the sofa already, antlers thrown on the coffee table – and then pushes a hand through his hair. “Reckon he’ll need pillows or anything?”

“Just chuck the throw over him, he’ll live.”

“You’re a heartless man, Moony.” Sirius reaches past him again to heft the kettle off its stand. “Move over, the teabags are in the cupboard behind your head.”

Even as he moves to the right Remus considers staying put. It would be easy to catch Sirius by the waist, slip his hands up inside his shirt. “I’ll floo back in a bit.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m fine.”

“Didn’t say you weren’t.” Sirius fishes the teabag out of the mug too early with his fingers, swears under his breath as he drops it in the sink. Remus hates it when he does that. “Just seems unnecessary.”

“You know you could just put that straight in the bin. The teabag.”

“I’ll put it in the bin if you promise not to floo back.” Sirius sways closer, his burnt thumb sucked deep into his mouth. Remus looks away.

“I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” he says. A small part of his brain feels delirious.

“Christ, I’m not going to jump you, Remus.”

“Think you made that clear when you walked out last year.” Now isn’t the time to be picking a fight, especially not this one, and yet Remus feels it under his skin like a livewire. If he pushes maybe they’ll have a fight big enough to merit a tectonic shift and Sirius will say something that proves Remus has been right about this all along, or maybe Sirius will shove him back against the counter and stick his tongue down his throat and finally touch him.

“ _You_ moved to Hackney,” Sirius says, a sharp whisper. “Look, I just think it makes sense, is all. Not like it’s brand new territory.”

Remus thinks about saying something cutting about that, but he stares into his mug and decides against it. It feels like they’ve been going in the same circles for the best part of a decade, treading the paths smaller and smaller. He hasn’t been alone with Sirius, properly alone, since the previous summer. Moving out had felt like the best decision in the world, a reclamation of something buried in his chest. Standing in this unfamiliar dimly lit kitchenette with Sirius breathing inches away from him, Remus never wants to move again. He can’t tell if it’s the alcohol in his system or the fact that the world feels like it’s closing in around them a lot quicker lately, a mounting sense of apocalyptic dread blocking out everything else.

“Bedroom’s down the hall. We can even top tail if you want,” Sirius says, and before Remus can roll his eyes he’s gone, haphazardly draping a throw over James legs as he goes.

Remus refills his mug, that same knife-twist in the pit of his stomach. He leaves the kitchen and flicks off the lights before treading softly down the corridor to the bedroom, where he finds Sirius stepping out of his jeans, his T-shirt already thrown in the vague direction of what Remus assumes is meant to be a laundry pile. At the sound of the door being pushed open he turns to glance over his shoulder.

“You get the left side, Moony.”

“Why, what happened to it.” Remus puts his water down on the dresser and fiddles with the buttons on his shirt. “You haven’t been sick have you.”

“Please,” Sirius says, kicking his jeans to the side and sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed, “I’m a gentleman.”

“You’re pissed.”

“So are you.” Sirius waves a hand at him dismissively and blows on his tea. Remus shrugs out of his sleeves and then wonders vaguely what to do about his jeans before deciding he’s too tired and too drunk to care about decorum, especially in front of Sirius. By the time he pads over to the bed Sirius is stretched out on his front, the bedside lamp casting the angles of his shoulders in orange; Remus traces the jut of bone with his eyes, could trace it with his fingertips if he wanted, the heat of his tongue. He thinks Sirius might even let him.

He gets into bed, rolls onto his side and pulls the duvet up under his chin, suddenly more aware of the marks on his own body than he has been in years. Lying down has brought all the alcohol to his face and he feels each raised ridge of skin lit up like a map: the ragged arc across his hip bone, the grooves clawed deep across his left shoulder, the oldest teeth marks knotting the softness just beneath his ribs into something rough-hewn. For the longest time he could tolerate the others seeing most of his scars except the oldest, the only one he didn’t put there himself, but waking up naked and bloody every month with an audience had made that difficult to maintain. Even so, there had been an unspoken sense that they weren’t to talk about it; some of the other scars had stories, anecdotes they could laugh about once the bandages came off, but never that one.

“Thought you were going to sleep in those fucking jeans.” Sirius mumbles into the pillow. Remus doesn’t open his eyes.

“Do you think Pete left because he pulled?” He asks, for something to say. Peter had ducked out around the third bar, citing an early start (bollocks, according to Sirius) and up until that point had been chatting on and off to a brunette with a bob and startling red lipstick. James had drawn attention to it, in typical James fashion, and bought a celebratory tray of shots that seemed to only disappear into Sirius and himself.

“Don’t think Peter’s capable of it.” Sirius shifts: Remus feels his breath on the nape of his neck. “Surprised you didn’t. Pull, I mean.”

Remus can’t help the small derisory snort. “Wouldn’t have been in the spirit of the stag do, would it.”

“Arguably it would be entirely in the spirit of a stag do. That bloke in the last place was making eyes at you.”

“Don’t think he was, in that sort of bar.”

“ _You_ were in that sort of bar.”

So were you, Remus doesn’t say. “Don’t see you bringing anyone home with you either.”

Sirius jabs him between the shoulder blades. “Can’t abandon my best man duties for a shag. What do you take me for, Moony?” A question Remus has a multitude of answers for, none of them anything Sirius would want to hear. “Anyway, you’re here.”

“I don’t count.” The silence that follows is heavy and Remus almost wishes he hadn’t said anything. The haze in his brain makes it easier to let the words out, but part of him had known it would goad Sirius and wanted to say it anyway. He waits a beat, two, and then he’s about to change the subject when he’s pulled flat by Sirius’ hand on his shoulder, forcing them almost nose to nose. Sirius has the gall to look confused.

“What does that mean,” he says, matter of fact.

Remus shrugs awkwardly to put a sliver of distance between them. He can still feel Sirius’ fingers on his skin. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Does.” Sirius looks at him hard. 

“It’s just different. Forget it.” By which he means the world has only just stopped spinning and if he sits up or tries to string more than a handful of words together he might be sick. By which he means the only reason Sirius is even bringing it up is because they both know that in the morning they can pretend he didn’t, which is exactly the way Sirius wants to have any conversation that might actually necessitate any emotional excavation. Remus turns his face to the ceiling.

“You do count.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Go to sleep.”

“You don’t get to.” Sirius shifts up onto his elbow, casting Remus in shadow. “You don’t get to just say something loaded and then pretend you didn’t.”

“Why not,” Remus mumbles, eyes fixed resolutely on the spidering plaster-cracks above the bed. Sirius’ stare burns. “You do it all the time.”

“That’s not fair. You misinterpreted it.”

“I said I don’t want to talk.”

“You were up for talking before.”

“If you just wanted me to stay so we could argue,” Remus starts, face suddenly hot. There’s a crack right above him that looks like a constellation joined up. “If you just want to have a go, I’ll floo home.”

“Fuck’s sake, Remus.” Sirius pushes his shoulder, gently but enough. His knee is pressed against Remus’ thigh. “You’re being fucking difficult.”

“I just don’t want to talk about it.” If he talks about it, whatever the straining behind his ribcage is or what it means, he won’t be able to put it back. He won’t be able to unsay it. Sirius’ hand is still on his shoulder.

“Fine,” Sirius says. “But I don’t know what to tell you if you think this isn’t anything.”

Remus looks at him then, half hallowed in the lamplight. If he were to reach out and pull Sirius down they could both blame the alcohol. He could hook an ankle behind Sirius’ knee and reel him in, a weight against the mess of everything inside; Remus contemplates the amount of times they’ve done variations of that only to talk around it afterwards, as if kissing your best friend with his cock in your hand is a rite of passage they don’t need to mention. Maybe that’s how things go in pureblood circles.

“I want to kiss you,” Sirius says, suddenly. Only just audible.

“What.”

“Not like we haven’t.”

“You don’t usually ask first,” Remus says.

“I’m asking now.” His fingertips smooth across Remus’ chest and come to rest at the curve of his throat, ghosting his pulse. Remus lets him. “Or are you too mad at me.”

“You can’t just start an argument and then think getting me off is going to shut me up.”

“ _You_ started the argument, in the kitchen.” Sirius looks at him like he’s stupid. “Do you think for once you can just accept there’s no, I don’t know, ulterior motives here.”

“Fine.”

“You’re the one who didn’t want to talk.”

“And yet you’re still going.” Remus can feel his heart in his throat. Sirius is staring at him, thumb drawing a guiding line along his jaw. “Thought you wanted to kiss me.”

“Thought you were being a dickhead about it.”

Sirius shifts his weight to the knee he’s pushed between Remus’ legs, the mattress creaking as it dips. The angle is off when he kisses him at first and then Remus’ hands are at Sirius’ waist, his hips, hauling him the rest of the way. Sirius’ mouth barely parts from his own as Remus pushes the duvet down and away before his brain has had the chance to fully catch up with the situation, the shape of Sirius’ body above him as familiar as his own. Part of him wishes he could let Sirius touch him without the requirement of them both being full of a lethal amount of shots, that Sirius would want to. Sirius rolls his hips down slow and Remus digs his nails into his ribcage.

“Now who’s being a dickhead.”

“You’re not complaining.” Sirius says it against his mouth, breath hot. And he’s right, something Remus hates to admit in most circumstances but especially now, of course especially now, when Sirius has the long fingers of one hand rooted in the curls at his nape and the other searing lines into his side. Remus wants Sirius to kiss him again - it thrums electric in his chest, in the heat curling in his gut. He wants it even if in the morning Sirius won’t so much as stand too close to him lest James ask something uncomfortable. He tries to push up onto his elbows, but Sirius has already shifted up and away, pressing him back down against the mattress, palm spread possessive across his chest as he straddles Remus’ hips. Strands of his hair have fallen loose, ink lines across the slope of his cheek. Remus doesn’t know how only an hour ago Sirius looked like he was seconds away from vomiting in an alley when he’s looking down at him now like something alabaster.

“What are you doing,” he says.

“What does it look like,” Sirius says, running his fingers lightly across a silver faultline cut through Remus’ collarbone.

“Like you’re wasting time.”

Sirius laughs then and curves in to kiss him slowly, the slide of his tongue against Remus’ bottom lip almost tentative. He tastes of mixed drinks and smoke. “You’re fucking insufferable,” he says. “Five minutes ago you were furious.”

“I’m not furious.”

Sirius’ mouth is at the corner of his own, at the hollow of his throat, licking a stripe up to the paper-thin skin behind his ear and biting down just enough that Remus’ breath hitches – he feels Sirius’ switchblade smirk against his jaw.

“No,” he says, sliding his hand down between them to palm Remus through his boxers, “Doesn’t feel like it.”

“Christ, shut up.” Remus doesn’t even have it in him to be embarrassed that he’s already half hard because Sirius’ hand is moving so slowly he thinks he’s probably going to go mad before he gets to experience any other state of being. In a lot of ways that would be fitting, honestly **.** He drags Sirius back to his mouth, one hand curved at the back of his head and the other gripping his thigh as if letting go will unmoor them both.

“What about,” Remus says, mostly into Sirius’ mouth, “What about James?”

“What about James.”

“He’s only on the sofa.”

“He’s unconscious,” Sirius says. He’s brought his hand back up to Remus’ face, smudging his thumb across his cheek, the swell of his bottom lip. “I wanted to kiss you earlier. Outside the bar.”

“You should’ve.” Remus says it before he realises how much he means it, has always meant it. Part of him has been waiting for Sirius to kiss him since way back when, a masochistic vein that runs deep and unfixable. A constant thrum echoing in his chest, _do something do something do something,_ folded away safe behind his heart until Sirius looks at him for too long. Remus kisses him again, honey-slow, letting his palms drive the length of Sirius’ back: familiar movements, muscle memory almost, a hunger in the way he brings his teeth down on his lip and tastes copper. Sirius moves to mark a trail across his chest, sucking bruises into his collarbone, the rungs of his ribs, tongue burning. He maps the jagged edges of the oldest bite with his fingertips first with such an unexpected softness it makes Remus want to cry, stupidly, and then presses a kiss to the centre; when he bites down it pulls at something sharp in Remus’ belly, has him hissing his breath in through his teeth. It makes him feel less vulnerable than when Sirius is just touching him, somehow. Sirius’ hand is splayed hot across his sternum and Remus wraps his fingers around his wrist tight just to touch him.

“How can you think this doesn’t count,” Sirius breathes, nose to skin. He soothes the flat of his tongue across where he’s just bitten before rocking back enough to inelegantly and impatiently manoeuvre Remus’ underwear off one leg.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Sometimes,” Sirius says, settling between Remus’ bent knees, “you’re really fucking stupid.”

“That a line you use on everyone you fuck?” Remus asks, reaching down to push his fingers through Sirius’ hair until they’re tangled at the back of his head. He knows from experience that if he pulls just enough at the roots Sirius will moan low against his skin, flushed and open mouthed.

“Only you.”

Remus lets his head fall back. If he closes his eyes the blue-black behind his lids swims. If he closes his eyes he doesn’t have to see how Sirius is looking up at him in a way that sets his blood on fire, or how Sirius is holding him down, licking slow patterns along the underside of his cock. Remus hears himself whine somewhere deep in the back of his throat and feels like he should probably be embarrassed by that as well, and maybe he would’ve been several vodkas ago, but that was before Sirius had his red-bitten mouth around him, his right forearm clamped down across his hips. Dimly Remus thinks that if he could he’d live in this feeling – the desire pooling in his belly and the heat of Sirius’ tongue pulse-like against his slit conspiring to drive him insane, his fingers anchored in Sirius’ hair like they’ve never been anywhere else.

Sirius pulls off, sucking hard and slow around the head. “God, you should see yourself.”

“You talk too much,” Remus says, horribly aware of the tremor in his voice. He wants to move a little but more than that he wants Sirius to hold him down forever, to pin him to the bed and fuck him hard enough to hurt. He wants Sirius to leave a mark over every existing scar on his body until each one is eclipsed by the shape of his mouth.

“Do I,” Sirius says. Remus looks at him then: Sirius’ sweaty hair wound around his fingers, Sirius’ mouth dark as he presses a kiss to the inside of his knee like something holy. It would be almost chaste if he didn’t also have a hand wrapped around Remus’ cock, and Remus is thinking about saying so when Sirius takes him in his mouth again and all he can manage is a desperate ragged breath, his hips rocking up erratically despite Sirius’ grip on them. He pulls where his hands are laced against Sirius’ scalp, nails scraping the skin, and when Sirius groans Remus feels it deep in his thighs. The heat of his mouth and the twist of his fingers is too much and too little all at once, and Remus finds himself gripping Sirius at the shoulders and pulling until he understands and moves back up the bed.

“Like this,” he says, breathless, “I want you here, where I can see you.” He hooks his thumbs under the waistband of Sirius’ boxers and pushes roughly until they’re off and lost in the bedclothes, coursing his hands back up to the swell of Sirius’ shoulders, short nails across his shivering skin. Sirius is hard against his thigh and Remus arches up again and again until Sirius moans into the slick of his shoulder. The thrill of it bursts in his chest and he rolls them over, drunk on several things but mostly this, the knowledge that he’s responsible for the way Sirius is undone beneath him, eyes blown bright. He grinds his hips down and when Sirius arcs back Remus kisses the column of his throat, catches his heartbeat in his teeth until he hears Sirius curse, feels him grasp at him like a man drowning.

It doesn’t get old, the way they fit together; fingertips bruising a constellation into his skin and the sound of Sirius panting a nonsensical spill of words into the space between them until Remus catches his mouth in a kiss, tongue and teeth. It doesn’t get old and that’s the problem, isn’t it, because he doesn’t know how long he’ll have this – the slide of Sirius’ body against his own, the thread between them pulled taut with want. The fact that it’s happening at all still feels like a fever dream. Sirius’ movements stutter, urging him faster, until Remus can hardly think for the rush of blood in his ears. It doesn’t take much, the circling of his hips, and Sirius’ mouth is open against his own as he gasps out _fuck, Remus_ , surging up with a faltering breath. He can feel Sirius’ heart, kisses him quiet as he comes. The wet spread of it between them and Sirius’ palms like brands on the backs of his thighs is what pushes him over, finally, the feeling buzzing low in his belly and spooling out into the rest of him, a humming livewire.

For the longest moment they stay like that, lungs heaving. Remus’ lips parted, Sirius staring up at him, dark eyed and otherworldly, before he brings a hand up to Remus’ face and touches him like braille.

“What are you thinking,” he asks.

Remus looks at him, marshalling his thoughts into some semblance of an order. He wants to say that he thinks Sirius is beautiful, the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, especially when he’s like this; his hair a dark splash across his face, sticking to his sweat-slick skin and his swollen mouth. He looks like something biblical, Remus wants to say _,_ but he thinks that might sound deranged.

“That I’m cutting off the circulation to your leg,” he says instead, giving an experimental rock of his hips. Sirius squirms and shoves him off a little to the side, flexing his toes. “Better?”

“You’re an arse.”

Afterwards, cleaned up and with their legs tangled in the bedsheets and each other, Sirius curls his body like a bracket against Remus’ spine, draping an arm across his waist. The heating charms laced into the windows have begun to wear off but neither of them can be bothered doing anything about it, so Sirius hikes the duvet back up across their shoulders and seals them in, his hand cold when he touches it to the flat of Remus’ stomach. Pressed so close like this Remus feels like a child cradled in sleep, Sirius’ breath soft against his shoulder. He closes his eyes in the half dark and tries to match the rise of his chest to Sirius’, the sense of safety held tight in his fist.

-

Remus wakes to an empty bed and a headache beating a tattoo behind his eye sockets. On the nightstand Sirius’ tea from last night is cold and briefly Remus considers drinking anyway it just to get the wool off his tongue. The door is ajar, BBC Radio 4 filtering through from the kitchen; Remus had never understood Sirius’ obsession with muggle radio, least of all the Sunday service, but it feels vaguely comforting to wake up to it and forget for a moment that he’s not in the flat they shared. He presses his face to the pillow, inhales Sirius’ shampoo, and wonders if it’s possible to suffocate yourself.

The flat smells of coffee and toast when he finally makes it down the hallway, dressed hastily in his boxers and one of Sirius’ T-shirts from the laundry pile. The curtains are still half closed, which feels like a small mercy – James is hunched on the sofa with the heels of his hands pressed hard into his eyes, and Sirius looks up from the stack of toast he’s building when he hears Remus enter the room.

“I was going to bring you toast,” he says, gesturing. His dressing gown is tied loose, and Remus can see the crimson bloom of a lovebite on the curve where his neck meets his shoulder and wonders if he knows. “James has already been sick twice.”

“Lucky James.”

“He made it to the bathroom the second time.” Sirius takes a bite out of the top slice of toast from his tower and pushes the plate across the counter as an offering. Remus pulls a face. “The bin took the brunt of the first. Coffee?”

“Mm.” Remus sidles past him to fetch a mug from the cupboard and then reaches for the cafetière, a ridiculously elegant thing Sirius had no doubt stolen from Grimmauld before he left. He shakes his head at the offer of milk and for a moment just stands against the fridge with his eyes closed, blowing half-heartedly on the coffee, the cold of the kitchen lino the only thing that feels vaguely grounded. From the sofa James makes a sort of strangled noise and Sirius looks vaguely concerned.

“You going to throw up again?”

“I feel like I shut my head in a door,” James mumbles, mostly into his hands.

“I think at one point you might’ve done.” Remus has dim recollections of a toilet cubicle and is about to bring it up when James lurches from the couch and disappears in the direction of the bathroom. Over his coffee mug Sirius raises an eyebrows.

“Told you.” He turns the dial on the radio up to block out James’ retching and then leans back against the sink so they’re mirroring each other, crowded in the narrow kitchen like it’s the only place they can allow themselves to stand this close together without an excuse. Sirius looks far better than he has any right to, given the circumstances, and Remus is grateful he hasn’t paused to look in a mirror yet this morning. He takes a sip of his coffee and lets it burn his tongue.

“Bet Lily will be thrilled to have him home.”

“What a time to be sober,” Sirius says, and then yawns. “I had to reparo his glasses this morning, stupid git must have slept on them.”

Remus keeps having to drag his eyes from the hickey and forces himself to focus instead on the soft jazz crackling out over the radio. When it fades out, replaced again by Roy Plomley prepping his next interview question, something about theatre, he clears his throat. “What happened last night?”

“Sex, if I recall.”

“Sirius.”

“Are you asking if it was a drunken shag about to be condemned to my mounting pile of great mistakes?” Sirius says it round a mouthful of toast, frowning like it isn’t a question worth answering. Remus could kick him.

“I suppose. We tried this sort of thing before, remember? The casual fucking.” Remus takes a mouthful of coffee and tries to seem nonchalant. “You listened to Paul Simon for weeks and then I moved out.”

“What do you want me to say?” Sirius says.

Remus has thought long and hard about what he’d say if Sirius asked him that, if he had the chance to lay out before them all the things he has always wanted to say, dug from the darker parts of himself. Holding Sirius’ gaze across the kitchenette he’s forgotten them all. He wants Sirius to blink first, to tell him what he wants to hear without being prompted – no it wasn’t a mistake but rather the culmination of months of harrowed pining on both sides, always bound to happen at the worst possible time for it, bigger picture wise, but something to be built on top of the earth they scorched last year. Something good. Something intentional.

“Just tell me what you want,” Remus says, and it feels like Sirius is holding his heart between his teeth.

“What do _you_ want, because I never seem to be able to work it out,” Sirius says, and he does for his part look genuinely bewildered. “You’re acting like we had some horrific breakup when we weren’t even together in the first place, not for want of trying, and then _you_ left _me._ ”

“You left first, remember? For two months. I thought you were dead, Sirius.” Remus holds his mug tight enough that his knuckles pale. Sirius looks away from him then, staring hard at the lino. Remus swallows. “What d’you mean not for want of trying.”

“What I said,” he shrugs lopsidedly. “You never seemed to want it.”

Remus almost asks him to repeat it. The sheer weight, the absurdity almost, of what Sirius is suggesting settles in his stomach like a stone. “You never asked.”

“This is ridiculous. You know that, right, that this is ridiculous?” Sirius asks, suddenly animated. “What part of sleeping together for months did you not understand.”

“You slept with other people.”

“Because you did!” Sirius says it louder than intended and glances instinctively towards the hallway in case James is about to veer the corner and walk unsuspecting into the middle of a fight. “You kept sleeping in your own room and you saw other people and I thought, I assumed that meant we were just a casual thing, and it was fine. People do that all the time, I thought it was what you wanted.”

“You could’ve just asked me,” Remus says, but he knows as he does that this is a glaring example of the pot calling the kettle black and from the look Sirius gives him it’s mutually acknowledged. “You didn’t talk to me for weeks.”

“Excuse me if my ego was bruised after you moved out. You barely even looked at me when you bothered to turn up to meetings, for fuck’s sake.” The sharpness of his stare softens, something raw and open taking its place. His fingers are wound tight around his dressing gown cord.

Remus doesn’t know what to do with that, being confronted so starkly with his own apparent faults. He leans his head back against the fridge and says, “Where did you go, last summer?”

“I did some errands for Dumbledore. Mostly useless stuff, he had me and McKinnon stake out a pureblood club in Cambridge for a couple of weeks but pulled it early. Then I went up to Alphard’s place.” He looks at his hands. “Technically mum got the house, but it’s just sitting empty. Gave me space to think.”

Remus doesn’t know what he’d expected in answer to that but somehow the fact that Sirius was squatting in his uncle’s manor for nearly two months doesn’t surprise him as much as he thought it would. Sirius has always been remarkably predictable in how he deals with conflict, holing up somewhere he feels safe until he’s quieted whatever was going on in his head. At school it was the astronomy tower parapet, often regardless of the weather; in fifth year after the incident Remus had found him there more than once, burning through a pack of cigarettes and staring out at the grounds like he was trying to commit them to memory or burn them down.

“Well?” Sirius says.

“Well what?”

“What do you want,” Sirius asks. He looks tired, probably due in part to the raging hangover but there’s something deeper too, a weariness too heavy for someone barely twenty-one. Remus sees it in the corners of his eyes, the gentle furrow of his brow. Something in his chest hurts. He doesn’t know the answer, not in a way he can explain. It seems so ingrained that verbalising it now feels impossible and to try would feel like an injustice, an inevitable fucking up of something he doesn’t want to sully. Remus wants to let himself want things, for once – he wants to step across the tiny kitchen and take Sirius’ face in his hands and kiss him stupid and know that he would have that for as long as he could, that Sirius wanted him back in a way that mattered. He supposes on some marrow-deep level it’s all he’s ever wanted, which feels both poetic and awful at the same time.

“I want to finish my coffee, and then I want to go back to bed and lie down for a long time, and I want to wake up and know you’re next to me.”

“Not much for the bigger picture, are we.”

“Did you want a five-year prospectus?”

“Bit optimistic if you ask me,” Sirius says, but he’s softened a little. Remus sees his shoulders slacken. “You’re impossible, you know.”

“So you keep saying.” Remus hides his smile in his coffee mug. The radio is warbling out something he vaguely recognises and Sirius is looking at him strangely, his grey eyes so pale in the weak morning light they’re almost silver. When Remus puts his coffee down on the side Sirius reaches across the gap and grabs the front of his T-shirt, pulling him across the lino until he can snake his arms around his waist. Remus doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

“Did you really not think I was interested.”

“You’re hard to read when you want to be.”

“I didn’t think I had to spell it out for you when we kept winding up naked, my mistake.”

“In fairness,” Remus says, settling his palms on Sirius’ chest, long fingers creeping into the dips of his collarbone where his dressing gown gapes, “I’ve spent the last ten years winding up naked with you in a variety of places, so.” He skims his fingertips over the purpling lovebite he’s left on Sirius’ throat and marvels quietly at the fact of it.

“Hm.” Sirius says, quirking an eyebrow. “Not sure how many of those occasions count. Is this my top?”

“First thing I grabbed off the heap on your floor. You really need to get a laundry basket by the way,” Remus says, and then leans in to kiss him softly, the coffee bitter on his tongue when Sirius’ mouth opens against his own. It’s a far cry from the desperate, messy kisses of last night, the way Remus cups Sirius’ face with one hand as if he’s something breakable; beneath his palm Sirius’ jaw is rough with day-old stubble, stark against his skin. With a guiding hand at the small of his back Sirius pulls him closer, fitting their hips together in a way that almost makes Remus forget the headache buzzing behind his eyes.

“I’m going to check James hasn’t drowned in the toilet,” Sirius says eventually, when he pulls back enough to speak. They stand for a while, nose to nose. Remus drums his fingers lightly, one-two, against Sirius’ pulse-point and then Sirius peels away and leaves Remus alone with the stack of cold toast.

He closes his eyes and sways slightly on the spot, his mouth tasting of an interesting mixture of last night’s vodka and this morning’s coffee and Sirius, and then he pads back down the corridor to the bedroom. He pauses at the half-open bathroom door to check that James is indeed alive before pushing open Sirius’ bedroom and sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed. He feels disembodied, loose at the joints; he falls back and closes his eyes until his brain stops ricocheting. From the bathroom he can hear Sirius’ voice low and soothing, and the occasional snort of laughter or groan of self-pity. If he didn’t know which of them was the worse for wear Remus wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. Somewhere deep down in his ribcage aches, like the bone-hurt of the moon but different, constant, the thrumming bloom of it warm in his chest. It seems unconscionable that James – birdnest haired James, the boy who threw up from eating too many exploding bon bons in third year, the boy who once hexed Rosier so badly after an altercation in the hallways he’d had weeping boils for three weeks – is days away from getting married, months away from becoming a father. It’s laughable and terrifying and if Remus feels that way he can only imagine how James feels, standing on the precipice like this when the world is falling off its hinges. Remus hears the bedroom door being pushed gently open.

“Bad luck to sleep lengthways across a bed like that,” Sirius says quietly.

“No it isn’t.” Remus doesn’t open his eyes. “Bad luck for you to disturb a sleeping werewolf.”

“You weren’t sleeping.” The bed dips as Sirius moves, sitting next to him so their knees touch. Remus lets his head fall to the left and when he looks Sirius is staring down at him, crooked mouth smiling. “Prongs is, now he’s done throwing up all of his internal organs.”

“Charming.”

“I slapped a cooling charm on his head and sent him back to the sofa. He still won’t take an aspirin. Doesn’t trust it, apparently.” Sirius’ fingertips are trailing lightly up the inside of Remus’ wrist, tracing the veins through paper skin. Remus looks at him and thinks _I love you._ He feels his heartbeat in his throat like a bird trapped in the hand, _I love you so much sometimes I feel insane._

“Parenthood will train that right out of him,” he says. Sirius laughs at that, a short burst that shows his teeth, and Remus never wants to forget the sound of it.

**Author's Note:**

> played fast and loose with canon dates here, in terms of James and Lily getting married in 1980 rather than just after leaving school (who DOES that anyway) and also the briefly mentioned death of the Prewetts. in the last scene the radio is playing an episode of Desert Island Discs, which is entirely selfindulgent on my part - saw my chance to include my middle-aged radio sensibilities in a fic and took it. the guest on the 16th Feb 1980 was the actor [Timonthy West](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009mwj9), and he did include jazz in his 8 tracks. i also forgot that technically the uk didn't get a smoking ban on lighting up in public places til 2007, but for plot reasons the smoking area stays.  
> thanks for reading, and i hang out sometimes on [tumblr](sqvalors.tumblr.com) if that's ur thing!


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